Exhibition runs: October 23 - November 10, 2026
Opening reception: Friday October 23, 2026 | 6 PM - 8 PM
Wallack Galleries presents two exhibitions featuring the work of Neil McClelland and Dale Dunning. Earthly Delights and Old and New bring together two distinct artistic practices, offering visitors the opportunity to explore painting and sculpture in one gallery setting.
Neil McClelland: Earthly Delights
Artist Statement
In Earthly Delights, Neil McClelland explores the human delight in gardens and the possible sentience of the plants that inhabit them. The flowering plants in this work are not literal representations but instead composites and defamiliarizations. McClelland, thinking of these as portraits, sees the plants as imagined characters with complexity and presence, each with its own connections to the surrounding world and cosmos. The works are foremost expressions of awe and wonder at the interconnectedness and interdependence of everything. They are part of his explorations into the precariousness and enchantment of human relationships to nature.
About Neil McClelland
Originally from the Gatineau Hills, Quebec, Neil McClelland divides his time between Edmonton, Alberta and Victoria, BC. He received his MFA from the University of Victoria and teaches visual art with Thompson Rivers University. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, and his paintings are in corporate, public and private collections. McClelland is a 2016 and 2020 grantee of the internationally prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation.
Through expressive mark making, narrative, and symbol, he seeks in his work to bring a sense of wonder and mystery to explorations of place, belonging, human relationships to nature and the cosmos, and the interconnectedness of everything.
Dale Dunning: Old and New
Artist Statement
Dunning’s fascination with the inner workings of the self has spanned more than fifty years, providing a continuous thread throughout his artistic practice.
Beginning in the 1970s, he explored the human mask as a vehicle for examining identity and consciousness, producing more than sixty variations on a generic, life-size form. This investigation evolved into three-dimensional heads, first enlarged to the classical heroic scale of 1.25 times life size, then to three times life size, as seen in some of the works in this exhibition and finally to a monumental scale, 10 times life size for outdoor installations.
Despite these changes in scale, the head retains its anonymous, gender-neutral form.
Dunning further explores the mask’s expressive potential through varied processes and materials. He manipulates wax models before casting them in bronze or aluminium, or fabricates the forms from cut-out elements of aluminium plate. Each approach allows the form to shift and evolve, revealing new possibilities for exploration.
Visit the Exhibition
Join us at Wallack Galleries for the opening reception on Friday, October 23, from 6 PM to 8 PM, and explore the work of both artists.
Wallack Galleries
305 Bank Street, Second Floor
Ottawa, Ontario